Jesse Jackson Jr. Unknowingly Explains How Greece Happens

First, we cut into unemployment by hiring more government workers! (But where does the money to hire them come from? Do we go deeper into debt forever more to pay their salaries? Do we take tax dollars that could be used to hire private workers?)

He says this will stop these workers from being dependent on the government (By paying them a government check to do busy work, we’re no longer giving them a check to do nothing, is that the idea? If that’s a good idea why don’t we have everyone working for the government, making $100 an hour, digging holes and filling them up?)

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Next up, he notes that we should pay off all the debt accumulated by cities, counties, and states so they can start with a “clean slate” (So, if we’re going to reward these states for spending recklessly, why wouldn’t they do it again? Doesn’t the debt they’ve taken on and the fear of what will happen when they go bankrupt further restrain spending and wouldn’t Jackson’s plan encourage even more spending, since they’d just be waiting for their next bailout? Why should taxpayers all across the country be asked to pay for the financial irresponsibility of politicians in cities and states that they don’t live in?)

Jackson claims we could do all of this for less than the cost of the stimulus, which of course, is an extremely dubious claim (That begs the question: what exactly did we spend the stimulus on? We dropped a trillion dollars on it and all we hear from Democrats is that we desperately need more stimulus, more infrastructure, and now more local debt relief — so, if it’s important, why wasn’t it already done in the stimulus?)

Long story short, what Jackson is proposing is how a nation becomes Greece. It constantly grows the size of government, thereby reducing the number of productive people while increasing taxes and regulations. Eventually, you end up with a huge debt, an incredibly expensive government, and an anemic private sector that isn’t capable of growing fast enough to pay the bills for either.

What we need to do is go in the exact opposite direction of what Jackson is suggesting. Aside from our military, border patrol, and a few other areas, we need to fire as many government workers as humanly possible, let cities, counties, and states pay the price for their profligate spending, cut back on spending, cut regulations as much as possible, and cut taxes where possible to encourage growth.

You don’t slow economic growth; you speed it up. You don’t grow the government; you shrink it. You don’t encourage cities and states to spend more; you encourage them to spend less. That’s how we start to turn the ship around. Continuing to pretend that this country has unlimited money, when we’re actually broke and maxing out our credit cards to keep the lights on, is the most foolish thing we can do.